Traditional business 4.0

His company is over 365 years old, but Franz Neuhofer, at the helm as the tenth generation managing partner, is only looking to the future. "As a future-orientated company, FN Neuhofer Holz is heavily involved in digitalisation and is increasingly making use of its possibilities," he says.
Originally emerging from a sawmill, the company, with its headquarters in Zell am Moos near Salzburg (Austria), sees itself today as a leading system provider for floors, walls and ceilings. The many centuries of company history don't stand in the way of innovation in production. On the contrary: Franz Neuhofer reports that the need to optimise processes, to be extremely flexible, to make procedures transparent and efficient and to "always have figures under control", will automatically lead to the use of modern IT systems.
A significant step was the development and implementation of a higher-level control of complete production lines, which serves to produce batches with the precise number of pieces but which also selects the machines required for each product and customer. It automatically reports disruptions relating to each machine to the FDC (factory data capture), forwards material usage to the MRP (manufacturing resources planning) and records offcuts. This control reduces errors, simplifies the operation of plants and provides data which assists in optimising processes. Initially the employees were sceptical about this production line control - today it is completely accepted and they no longer want to work without it.
Various manufacturers of machines and plants are increasingly offering the option of machine monitoring. For example by monitoring various parameters, it is possible to avoid damage to machines and therefore also production downtime, preventative maintenance can be specifically carried out which reduces costs, in short: it's highly efficient. Neuhofer is also going to make use of these possibilities.
The total amount invested in the automation project implemented until now amounts to approximately eight million euros. The productivity of some lines have been increased by up to a third. Where production used to be carried out in a three-shift day, only a two-shift day is required today for even greater performance.

Moreover, this year in…